- Enjoyable, relaxing space survival gameplay
- Excessive, tedious grind for resources
- Critical bugs and instability issues
- Poor inventory and quality of life
- Insufficient content for the price
- Lack of clear guidance for players
Emotions
Players frequently experience frustration due to persistent technical issues like game crashes, especially during menu loading or on specific platforms like Steam Deck. This is compounded by tedious gameplay loops, including excessive grinding for resources like crystals and batteries, and difficulties with inventory management, progression blockers, and unhelpful UI, leading to a sense of wasted time and repetitive tasks.
Satisfaction stems from the game's intuitive controls, enjoyable multiplayer, and a generally chill and relaxing crafting and survival experience in space. Players appreciate the balance between grind and progression, the game's originality, atmosphere, and fitting music and visuals. The overall quality, polished feel, and solid progression contribute to a positive player experience.
Disappointment arises from the game's perceived unfinished state at launch, leading to an inability to play due to frequent crashes and a lack of quality-of-life updates. Players feel the game quickly devolves into a 'rock fetch simulator' with limited content, poor design choices like an immobile ship, and a lack of automation, diminishing its value for money.
Excitement is driven by anticipation for future content and continued development, as players find the core idea of the game cool and enjoy the interesting exploration and unique movement mechanics like slingshotting through rock fields. There's a strong sense of optimism for the game's evolution.
Calmness is a common emotion, attributed to the game's relaxing and engaging gameplay, often described as a 'chill' or 'zen' atmosphere. The presence of cute space dinosaurs and a lo-fi experience further enhances this peaceful feeling.
Verdict
Mixed
Summary
Positive 61% · Negative 39%. Score: 39 / 100
Positives:
- Players generally find the game to be a fun, engaging, and relaxing survival-crafting experience with good core mechanics and a solid foundation. Many appreciate its chill atmosphere and the balance it strikes between grind and progression, leading to extended play sessions.
- The development team receives high praise for being active, responsive, and consistently listening to community feedback, implementing bug fixes and updates quickly.
- The game's music and audio design are consistently praised for being peaceful, fitting the space theme, and enhancing the sense of exploration and discovery.
- Reviewers appreciate the game's good graphic quality, appealing art style, and cute, colorful visuals. The UI is also noted for being well-designed.
- The movement mechanics in space are highlighted as feeling realistic, contributing to an immersive experience of floating and collecting resources.
Negatives:
- The game's progression, particularly around acquiring crystals and other late-game resources, is described as an excessive and tedious grind. This is exacerbated by unclear guidance, reliance on RNG, and high difficulty spikes, making advancement frustrating and time-consuming.
- Players report numerous critical bugs, including frequent crashes, game-breaking glitches like getting stuck in terrain, and significant issues in multiplayer such as desynchronized UI elements. These technical problems severely hinder the gameplay experience and indicate a lack of polish.
- Players are frustrated by highly restrictive inventory limits and the inability to stack many items, leading to constant inventory management. Tedious mechanics like manual crushing further contribute to a clunky and inefficient user experience.
- Many players feel the game lacks sufficient content for its price point, especially for an Early Access title. The initial gameplay loop quickly becomes repetitive, leading to boredom after only a few hours, and some perceive the pricing as a 'cash grab' given the limited offerings.
- The game suffers from a lack of clear tutorials and explanations for its mechanics, leaving players confused about how to progress, use tools, or understand crafting systems. This unhelpful design contributes to a frustrating learning curve.
Gameplay:
- The core gameplay loop involves players, often described as aliens, surviving in space after their ship is destroyed. They must gather resources from asteroids to rebuild their base/ship, craft essential items like oxygen and food, and progress through research. The game is often compared to 'Raft in Space' due to its survival and crafting elements.
- Asteroids are the primary source of resources, including various crystals essential for research and upgrades. Players frequently engage in 'rock fetching' to collect these materials, often venturing further from their base to find larger asteroids with more advanced crystals.
- A significant point of feedback is the lack of automation. Players must manually sort inventory, load machines, and manage multiple copies of the same machine for different recipes, leading to a 'manual' and often tedious gameplay experience.
- The multitool is a key item for player movement between asteroids, utilizing a 'gravity pull' mechanic. As players progress, they unlock propulsion systems and other movement upgrades, allowing for faster and more extensive exploration within the asteroid field.
- Research is crucial for progression, divided into categories like basebuilding, exploration, and multitool. Advancing through research tiers requires increasing amounts of specific crystal types, often necessitating back-and-forth resource gathering.
Performance:
- Based on very limited and low-quality feedback, there's a vague indication that the reviewer's system generally handles games well. This point lacks specific details about the game in question or any actionable insights.
Recommendations:
- Many players express a positive outlook on the game's future, despite its current early access state. They recommend it with reservations, often suggesting waiting for further development or content updates before purchasing, especially if hesitant about the price or current content amount.
- Players frequently request more automation, particularly for resource gathering like asteroid catching, and a reduction in manual grinding. They suggest starting with basic automated tools to improve the early and late-game experience.
- The game is recommended for players who enjoy specific genres, such as exploration, crafting, base building, and mellow, grind-heavy themes. Comparisons to games like Raft are often made to set expectations.
- Several players feel the game's current price is too high for the amount of content and enjoyment it offers in its early access state. They advise against purchasing at full price for now.
- Players suggest trying the demo as a good indicator of whether the full game will be enjoyable. If the demo is liked, the full game is likely to be a good fit.
Miscellaneous:
- As an Early Access title, the game is noted for its current lack of extensive content and story, which is typical for games in this development stage. Players acknowledge this limitation but anticipate future updates.
- Many players found the game surprisingly engaging, often playing for several hours despite initial reservations. This indicates a strong core gameplay loop that hooks players.
- The game is frequently compared to 'Raft' but set in space, often with elements of 'Satisfactory' or 'Astro Colony'. This helps players understand the core mechanics and genre.
- Based on limited and varied feedback, some players noted average PC requirements and a suitable price point. Other comments were less substantial.
- The game's current name 'Drift' is considered problematic for search engine optimization, making it difficult for potential players to find the game.
